Satanis via Lulu

[MatrixGamer]

take a look at the free pdf layout and cover art at the lulu page or now my website...

http://www.lulu.com/content/113758

thanks, Darrick Dishaw
www.CultofCthulhu.net[/quote]


I checked out the PDF on the LUlu page. It came up as a word file. Your games seems fine. Word basically sucks to present graphic design so it looks like a game in manuscript form. I use word for writing - I used to use MS Publisher for book design but it shares too many of Word's faults. Putting what you have now in InDesign, Quarkxpress, or Page Maker will produce better results even without funkie graphics or pictures. Your list of creatures just begs to be heavily illustrated (which Word just doesn't do well). Since you are going for a specific aesthetic, a graphic desing that follows that fashion would enhance the effect. My Cthulhu stuff is generally set in the 1920's and 30's so I use Art Deco graphics to add to the feel. If I was doing something set in the 60's I use 1967 hippie like graphics, you get the idea. This is separate from "game making" per se but it does add to the entertainment effect of the book.

The really nice thing about print on demand is the ability to incorporate changes into future books easily. Unlike having 1000 books to sell before changes can occur, you may have 10 to sell. I've personally benifited from this kind of flexibility. I seem to redesign my books every year. I has helped.

Your covers are colorful. That is good. They do give the "World has gone crazy" effect. I didn't see a title on them (and I couldn't tell if there was a title on the spine. Even if the book never goes to stores, I like to have a title on it (especially a spine title - so I can find it on my shelves easily.  The trouble with a book of less than 40 pages is that there is not much spine to print on! Also 8.5x11 books that are thin can have a bad worping problem. Paper soaks up humidity like no tomorrow. If you're not storing tons of books in cardboard boxes in the garage (like one of my early games - What was I thinking?) then you'll probably not see this.

Anyway enough rambling.

Good luck with the game! If you're at GenCon drop by the Hamster PRess booth and show me the real book, I'm certain the PDF doesn't do your work justice.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press

[darrick]

hey, thanks for the encouragment and advice, matrixgamer.  i'd love to have some interior art, although i think that sort of stuff is so immensly important that i couldn't allow any unless it completely blew me away technically, aesthetically, and faithfully to the race descriptions.  i'm a very visual person, and a kinda lame drawing would really destroy my perception if i was a person who bought Empire of Satanis.  kind of like how Lovecraft's monsters are better imagined than artistically realized.  although there are a lot of cool Lovecraftian artists out there.  for instance the pics i was able to use from the Call of Cthulhu CCG on my website.  a decent pdf exists on the website, so hopefully people's first gander at the material will be there, then go to lulu to purchase the book version.

i am a creative person by nature, so that will never die.  game design has been a cool and interesting challenge, however, it might be a good long while before i attempt it again.  at the moment i'm more interested in putting together my collection of short stories, poetry, and magickal theory (the real kind).  

i had it in mind to create the rpg that i really wanted to play, and that i did.  EoS is a lot of fun and a huge breath of fresh air compared to D&D.  a couple EoS quotes from people have been, "the rpg your mother warned you about" and "Lovecraft in Hell and on Acid."  word.  having said that, i do hope people will play it, like it, and spread my vision around.  flawed or no, i will be pimping Satanis for a good long while.  i'll see you at GenCon!

p.s.  if anyone wants to use my banner to link my website to theirs, please feel free to do so:  http://cultofcthulhu.net/cult_of_cthulhu_banner.jpg

thanks, D

_____________________

www.CultofCthulhu.net

[Andrew Morris]

Justification. Jagged paragraph edges are not good for reading. They make a text more difficult to read, physically.

Good god, I couldn't disagree more! I loathe justification with a passion, and can't read it without getting a headache. I'm a textual person, and while justification makes a block of copy look nicer from a distance, I can't stand the awkward, variable spacing between words on different lines. Which just shows that what works for some, doesn't work for others.

[Jasper]

I think most people find ragged-edge easier -- and some studies have indicated as much. It's because the spacing varies so much with justification, especially if your program isn't very good at it (e.g. Word). But justification looks better from a distance, often, and puts more text on a page. Most role-playing books I have use justification (Orkworld, DitV and Last Unicorn Games' original Star Trek games being the exceptions), though probably for convention as much as anything -- it's just perceived as more professional.

[paulkdad]

Here's a link to a well-researched article on justified text:
http://www.utpjournals.com/jour.ihtml?lp=product/jsp/292/292_jamison.html

I think a lot of it is simply personal preference. Most of what I read is justified, and sometimes the ragged right edge bothers me. At other times, I'll be distracted by the rivers of spaces running through justified text. But once a reader has made up his/her mind on this question (for instance, my wife would go along with Andrew in a sort of rabid distaste for justified text) I think they're going to be annoyed by the other option.

[madelf]

It must suck to be a person who is really bothered by justified text. Considering that the overwhelming majority of books are printed that way, it must make choosing reading material a real chore.

For myself, either is perfectly readable. Ragged right really doesn't bother me, but justified does make for a more visually appealing page if handled well. I have noticed problems with justified text more often in game books, but there it's more often caused by squeezing the column of text too narrow (either by poor wrapping around too large an image or having more columns than the page & text size warrents) so that there isn't room for the words to space without large gaps. In those cases, it's not really a text justification problem, but a layout problem.

[Jasper]

...it's not really a text justification problem, but a layout problem.

That's definitely the overriding issue. Neither justified or ragged-edge are universally better. They both do different things, and can either be used well or poorly.

[MatrixGamer]

I think most people find ragged-edge easier -- and some studies have indicated as much. It's because the spacing varies so much with justification, especially if your program isn't very good at it (e.g. Word).

Word and MS Publisher suck at Justification. Page Maker/InDesign do it very well. The programs used by the printing industry are wonderful at this.

Of course justification is nothing new. We were taught how to do it in Print class in High School in the 70's (when type was still used for printing.) It was all a matter of putting in thin strips of metal. Type was all measured in Picas so you know how long a sentence would be by word count and that would show how much spacing was needed. Good programs now also can expand or contract letters.

Chris Engle
Hamster Press